Progress report on the CAC manpower and educational planning model

Economic planning has recently begun to focus on a new dimension: that of anticipating the manpower, educational and skill requirements likely to result from different patterns of economic and social development. The U. S. record in this area thus far has not been encouraging, and the present difficulties faced by job seekers in many fields of engineering and natural sciences-and in a number of other professional disciplines-attest to the failure of educational and manpower planning in this nation in the late 1950´s and the 1960´s. This paper discusses a large-scale manpower and educational planning model presently being developed at the Center for Advanced Computation (CAC) of the University of Illinois. This model is unique in several respects: it utillzes a number of detailed data sets available from the Federal government which have not previously been integrated in a coherent manner, it is a user oriented system which allows it to be employed by persons unfamiliar with economic modeling or computer software, and it can accept inputs and deliver outputs nationwide via ARPANET facilities. A brief overview of the system is presented, the results of several empirical analyses conducted with components of the model are discussed, and the prospects for continued implementation and development of this type of system are indicated.